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Page Turners: Classroom Management

May 06, 2015

Greetings and welcome to Page Turners, a weekly Wednesday linky, where I feature great blog posts I have read (and sometimes that I have written). Hopefully you will find ideas that inspire you in your classroom and your teaching and maybe even a new blog to follow. Read down to the end of the post for directions if you are interested in linking up a post of your own.

And now on to this week's topic: classroom management. We all have that one student or maybe even that one class or many too many students in too many classes that are disruptive. Hopefully you fill mind some new ideas here for how to tame your little monster(s).

Building community in the classroom is key to having a positive classroom environment and will eliminate many classroom management issues (ideally). Susan Barber of AP Lit Help blogs about five ways she builds community in her classroom. These ideas would apply in any classroom (not just an AP one) and any grade level. My favorite idea is "Funny Fridays." I have always wanted to start "Wacky Wednesdays."

We all have that tough student. The one that causes us to breathe a secret sigh of relief when he/she is absent because we just know our day is going to be a little easier. Dr. Allen Mendler, a blogger on Edutopia, offers four fresh starts for hard-to-like students. All four are easy to implement.

Angela Watson of The Cornerstone explains the 2 x 10 strategy, a research based classroom management strategy. A teacher spends two minutes for ten days in a row talking to a difficult student about whatever the student wants to talk about. After ten days, a relationship will be formed making the difficult student less difficult. The blog post and comments have some great testimonials to the strategy's success.

Brain Waves Instruction blogs about "What I Know for Sure about Learning" and shares 10 ways to show students you care. This infographic is a quick visual introduction to her ideas, but read the post for all the details. Again, if you build positive relationships with your students that will eliminate many of your classroom management problems. Be proactive!

Think you can't do a marble jar with your middle school or high school students? Think again. This post is a cheap and easy DYI for creating a way to reward students and build classroom community.

For more ideas and resources for managing student behavior:

Also be sure to check out the posts linked up below and come back next week for some great posts about using games to promote learning.